Home pressure beats Laugher but Heatly & Grace win bronze

02 May 2015 / 21:51

Jack Laugher suffered a shock exit in the semi-final of the men's 3m springboard on day two of the Diving World Series in London and feels he let the pressure of performing in front of a home crowd get the better of him.

The 20-year-old who won the event in Dubai and Russia, finished fourth in his semi-final with a respectable score of 434.15 but it was his fifth dive for which he scored just 45.60 that ultimately cost him a place in the final.

The event was won by Evgeny Kuznetsov of Russia with a score of 519.40 at the Aquatics Centre in the Queen Elizabeth II Olympic Park.

"There was a lot of expectation and that made me very nervous and threw me off,” Laugher said. “Thinking about other things when I should of been focusing on my performance.

"Last night was so good in our synchro event, we got second and I was feeling really good then. I think something was just off this morning.

"Normally I’m very tunnel vision on what I’m doing but today just wasn't on and that's a huge shame."

Despite finishing sixth in the other semi-final with a score of 402.40, James Denny was delighted with his performance in his first individual competition.

"I'm absolutely buzzing with my performance this morning," Denny said. "This is my first ever world series competition so obviously I was very nervous going in to it diving against probably the top eight divers in the world."

Meanwhile, James Heatly and Grace Reid won bronze in the mixed 3m synchro with a score of 299.76, behind winners Hao Yang and Han Wang of China who scored 336.90.

Reid said: "We're over the moon. We went out there just hoping to dive our best and wanted to dive well under pressure in a home environment so I think we definitely did that and the medal is just unbelievable."

When asked for his thoughts on the new event, Heatly said: "It's great, we train all the time together so the fact we get to do an event together is amazing."

Alicia Blagg and Rebecca Gallantree finished fifth and sixth in the secnd semi-final of the women's 3m springboard.

The final of the event was won by Tingmao Shi of China with a score of 374.35.

Despite not making the final, Blagg who scored 304.35 in the semi-final was proud of her performance.

She said: "I'm really happy with it. This is my second individual competition of the year.

"Being quite close to being in a final as well, it was really good to be up against the best in the world and knowing if i can hit all my dives I do have a chance.”